Does Chronic Pelvic Pain Make You Feel Like You Do Not Measure Up to Other Women?

What is Chronic Pelvic Pain?

I am passionate about understanding as much as I can on the topic of Chronic Pelvic Pain to the point that I devoted my Masters thesis solely to its study. My Masters thesis was entitled: From the Darkness into the Light: Women’s experiences with Chronic Pelvic Pain.

Definition: Chronic Pelvic Pain (CPP) is a condition that is described as a lower abdominal pain unrelated to pregnancy that has lasted for at least six months and affects 38 out of every 1000 women. CPP is not easily remediable.
Despite treatment procedures, symptoms of CPP often persist for years. Further, the origins and symptoms that contribute to CPP are far-reaching and overlapping which contributes to the difficulty in establishing a diagnosis. Some of the medical problems that cause CPP are Endometriosis, Interstitial Cystitis, Fibroids, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Psychological Impact of CPP: CPP also greatly affects women psychologically due to symptoms such as depression and anxiety and has a direct impact on the social, marital, and professional lives of women and leads to substantial impairment in quality of life. That is why for women dealing with CPP who are seeking therapeutic support, finding a therapist who is knowledgeable and aware of the ways in which they are affected by this condition and the subsequent challenges that they face is especially important.

Other areas that remain invisible are how chronic pain is strongly related to reports of poor health, high levels of stress, low levels of social support, interference with work and other activities, higher levels of health care utilization, and higher medication usage.
Further it should be noted that as a therapist I am trained to help clients talk about subjects that are sometimes hard for them to articulate, clients who are feeling alone with their problems and need support, as women with CPP generally are.

Chronic pelvic pain doesn’t have to tear your life apart. Therapy can help.

Let me, as your counsellor, guide and support you in making changes in your life.
Counselling can be that fresh new start that you have been craving. Like standing at the beginning of a trailhead before a long hike in the woods, you may feel some anxiety, fear about embarking on a new path that you know will entail challenges…but in the end, therapy also entails some of the biggest rewards possible.
Counselling can help you bring more awareness to the destructive and unhelpful thoughts you are having and help you challenge and break these patterns. Therapy can be the spark you need to ignite the change that you want in your life. Therapy can help you cope with Chronic pelvic pain.
It’s never too late to start your journey on the path to a new life.

Counselling Can Help You:

Feel calmer and more in control

Be healthier and stronger in relationships with friends and family

Be more positive and accepting of yourself and your body image

Let go of the idea of perfectionism; be satisfied with who you are

Attain deeper self-awareness of who you are, what you want, and how to get there

Increase communication skills and feel better about asking for what you want

If you have CPP you could be:

Blaming yourself when you cannot be sexually available to your partner

Feeling guilty at not being able to be the same mother/sister/wife/partner/person that you used to be

Dealing with high stress that has reached a point of crisis

Coping with anxiety that seems to take control of your life

Ashamed that you are not good enough; with low self-esteem

Grieving relationship loss due to the havoc of CPP in your life

Unable to work due to pain

Suffering long-term depression

Facing relationship problems

Feeling like you're ‘losing your mind’ as you have no official diagnosis

Facing problems being heard and understood by your doctor

Living in a world where you are constantly bombarded with images and messages about how women are ‘supposed’ to be and are expected to behave can create feelings of
stress, anxiety and depression.

Experiencing CPP can make any woman feel hopeless about her future.

You try to fight these negative feelings but end up back where you started feeling defeated. The pattern repeats itself over and over and in the meantime you feel like you have lost a part of yourself….

When you are not happy and content your relationships suffer. Your work suffers. Everything suffers.

It is likely that you are already experiencing your life being turned upside down and that you are not the same person you once were.